AN acquaintance of mine who works on the Moscow-Kursk Railway as a weigher, in the course of conversation mentioned to me that the men who load the goods on to his scales work for thirty-seven hours on end. Though I had full confidence in the speaker's truthfulness I was unable to believe him. I thought he was making a mistake, or exaggerating, or that I misunderstood something. But the weigher narrated the conditions under which this work is done so exactly that there was no room left for doubt. He told me that there are two hundred and fifty such goods-porters at the Kursk station in Moscow. They were all divided into gangs of five men, and were on piece-work, receiving from one rouble to 1R. 15 (say two shillings to two and fourpence, or forty-eight cents to fiftysix cents) for one thousand poods (over sixteen tons) of goods received or despatched. They come in the morning, work for a day and a night at unloading the trucks, and in the morning, as soon as the night is ended, they begin to re-load, and work on for another day. So that in two days they get one night's sleep. Their work consists of unloading and mov bales of seven, eight, and up to ten poods (say eighteen, twenty, and up to nearly twenty-six stone. Two men place the bales on the backs of the other three who carry them. By such work they earn less than a rouble (two shillings, or forty-eight cents) a day. They work continually, without holiday. Stone |